2 days ago Obama announced re engagement with CUBA, to gauge the seriousness of the matter me and Carla Bell (the first normal mature beautiful woman I have met in 30 years) post hastedly headed out to restaurant versailles, the LIGHTING ROD EPICENTER of robust debate when anything Cuban happens, this is the spot where Fidels death was going to be celebrated, upstaged by the Pres...and I am glad.

The year I was born Havana had more cinemas than New York or Paris, take a look at these jewels frozen in time!

Here's Hoping that political reforms increase the standards of living to afford HDR and Atmos (done right:sans horns)

HAVANA TIMES — Less than a year ago, private 3D home theaters – an initiative that spread to most Havana’s neighborhoods before it was nipped at the bud – demonstrated that it is still possible to tap the potential of a Cuban tradition that is most likely about to become extinct.

Even though admission was often 25 times that established for Cuban State cinemas (2 Cuban pesos), private home theaters that screened 3D films had a huge demand and gave residents of Havana an alternative to Vedado’s familiar movie theater circuit.

The tradition of the neighborhood theater seemed to experience a kind of rebirth. In an economically precarious environment where other forms of cultural consumption had taken center-stage, the people of Havana began to make the choice it had made regularly half a century before: “to see and let oneself be seen”, using the movie screen as a pretext.

In 1958, immense signs showing a film scene or the face of one of the leads decorated the walls of Havana. Every week, delivery people from different cinemas took the theater’s program to people’s homes, and, on weekends, the entrances to these establishments welcomed crowds of people wearing their Sunday best. With admissions at 20 and 60 cents, even the humblest could afford to attend a show.The Record Cinema

The Record Cinema

At the time, the Cuban capital boasted around 130 movie theaters, more than there were in New York or Paris at the time. Many of these cinemas were directly serviced by important production and distribution companies, such as 20th Century Fox, Columbia and Metro Goldwyin Meyer.

Asking about the fate of these privileged establishments of Havana’s past, we find that many (usually the smallest) have disappeared and that others, now virtually in ruins, are being utilized for cultural projects that receive practically no financial aid from the State.

What was once the Rex Cinema is today a warehouse where the cleaning utensils of Havana’s garbage collectors are stored. The former Florencia and Finlay theaters, to be transformed into the venues of the Teatro de la Luna theater company and the Cuban Rap Agency, respectively, are highly deteriorated and restoration efforts are constantly being interrupted.Los Angeles Cinema

Los Angeles Cinema

A number of theaters that have been shut down for decades are now being rented out, as is the case of the Florida and Apolo cinemas in Havana’s municipality of Diez de Octubre. Others are operating as video-projection theaters (one is located in what was once the Los Angeles cinema).

The Neptuno, which, along with the Actualidades, was one of the first cinemas in the Cuban capital (and housed a disco at one point), is today propped up by wooden scaffolding and about to be demolished.

Though the disappearance of neighborhood movie theaters is a global phenomenon, these buildings are rarely replaced by others in Cuba’s case. Generally, these establishments are allowed to deteriorate into uninhabitable spaces before being handed over to the community.

Despite the interest awakened by cultural events such as the Havana Film Festival, the French Cinema Festival and the screening of foreign films, the island’s movie theaters continue to screen films without any efforts to diversify their cultural programs, as the La Rampa or Radiocentro theaters did until 1959.

Tempering his historic Cuba policy shift with a dose of realism, President Barack Obama said Friday that change may not come quickly to the communist island. He suggested Congress will keep the U.S. economic embargo in place until lawmakers can gauge the pace of progress in the "hermetically sealed society."

Still, Obama's surprise announcement this week that the U.S. was ending its Cold War diplomatic freeze with Cuba appeared to have contributed to energizing the president as he closes a difficult sixth year in office.

"My presidency is entering the fourth quarter," Obama said at a year-end White House news conference shortly before leaving for a two-week Hawaiian vacation. "Interesting stuff happens in the fourth quarter."

On domestic matters, Obama was measured about the prospect of forging compromises with the new Republican majority on Capitol Hill, and he warned the GOP that he would block efforts to dismantle his health care law or further water down banking regulations. He made no commitment to sign the first bill incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed to take up: approval of the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Obama said the project's value has been exaggerated.

The president spoke shortly after the FBI formally accused North Korea of hacking Sony Pictures Entertainment. Obama promised to respond to the cyberattack "in a place and manner and time that we choose." But he also criticized Sony for shelving the satirical film about a plot to assassinate North Korea's leader that sparked the attack, saying the entertainment company "made a mistake."

Despite Obama's upbeat mood as 2014 comes to a close, his sixth year in office has been one of fits and starts. His agenda was frequently overshadowed by a broad array of crises, including the rise of Middle East militants, Russia's actions in in Ukraine, a surge of unaccompanied minors to the U.S.-Mexico border from the south and an Ebola outbreak in West Africa that brought fears to this country. Obama's Democratic Party suffered sweeping losses in a midterm election where the president was deemed too unpopular to participate.

Yet Obama pointed to the decline in the nation's unemployment rate, increased economic growth and numerous states and cities enacting minimum wage increases the president has championed.

Obama also seemed to find his footing after the election, unveiling executive actions on immigration and striking a surprise climate change deal with China, both of which were greeted by accusations of presidential overreach from Republicans. On Wednesday, he unilaterally ended the Cold War-era diplomatic freeze with Cuba, the communist island just 90 miles off the U.S. coast.

The policy shift with Cuba is among the most substantial foreign policy actions of Obama's presidency. But he said he doesn't expect decades of dictatorship on the island to end quickly and said he shared Cuban dissidents' concerns about the country's poor human rights record.

"This is still a regime that represses its people," Obama said. He expressed an interest in visiting Cuba at some point in his life, but suggested that visit might have to wait until after his presidency.

Still, Obama shared an unusual level of detail about a friendly private phone call earlier this week with Cuban President Raul Castro. The call marked the first substantive discussion between the leaders of the two nations in more than 50 years.

Obama said he opened the call with a 15-minute statement, then apologized for the length of his remarks. The Cuban leader replied that Obama was "still a young man and you still have the chance to break Fidel's record: He once spoke for seven hours straight," Obama said, referring to Cuba's longtime dictator Fidel Castro.

The president said the Cuban leader then delivered an opening statement at least twice as long as his. "I was able to say, 'Obviously, it runs in the family.'"

The president was cautious in setting specific goals for how much progress he expected Cuba to make by the end of his tenure, but said "change is going to come to Cuba." Still, he suggested Congress was unlikely to quickly repeal the full U.S. economic embargo on Cuba.

"People are going to want to see how does this move forward before there's any serious debate about whether or not we would make major shifts in the embargo," Obama said.

During his 17-day break in Hawaii, Obama is expected to spend some time crafting his State of the Union address, in which he will outline his goals for working with the GOP-led Congress. House Speaker John Boehner has invited Obama to address a joint session of Congress on Jan. 20.

The president has already raised the prospect of reaching accords with Republicans on trade, which is a rare area of agreement between the White House and the GOP. And Obama said his staff would be talking to Republicans in the coming weeks to start work on overhauling the nation's complicated tax code, though both sides acknowledge that their differences on the complex issue run deep.

"I'm being sincere when I say I want to work with this new Congress to get things done," Obama said.

Every year in December, the International Festival ofNew Latin American Cinema takes place in Havana,transforming it into a real City of Cinema.Visiting Havana and its cinemas today, one gets a prettynormal impression - at least at first glance. There are 33cinemas running and they seem to show quite a normalprogram as well.Taking a closer look, one notices that there must besomething more to it. Firstly, all the cinemas haveonly one auditorium, and quite a lot of them are hugecompared to european standards, reminding more of anopera or concert hall than of the average cinema as weknow it.Being aware of what’s behind the facades, one startsto view the cinemas differently. It gets obvious that theirvolumes and roofs clearly show what happens inside,that there is a specific cinema typology that does notappear in europe anymore.If Cuban people are asked about the number ofcinemas in Havana, they will suggest that there werea lot more cinemas in the city before the Revolution.The numbers stated range from

0 to

00, making itquite unclear how many cinemas really existed. What iscertain is that cinema has a very special place in Cubanculture.Wondering what happened to all these cinemas, wewent out to find them, with the help of a list dating from

The cinemas of Havana can be seen as a mirror ofwhat happened in the city in the last

0 years, betweenthe arrival of the cinematograph and today, for both thearchitectural and cultural developments of the city andthe cinemas were taking place in a parallel way.While the construction of all those cinemas coincideswith the major city growth before

959, a nationalCuban film culture emerges only after the Revolution,supported by the new governments concern for culture.Historical, political and social events all had theirinfluences on the cinema structures and the cultural life.On account of the extraordinary circumstances of theRevolution that preserved a moment in time, all thosetraces are still visible today.Like everything in Havana today, the cinemas havebeen adapted to the situation, making the best out of itwith available resources.This goes for the adaptation of structures for other usesas well as for the ways of dealing with the oversizedauditoriums

This is old Havana, man if My Great Great Granfather Colonel Selles( EL TERROR DE LA HABANA) confiscated 500 homes for spain right before the Spanish American War, it is safe to assume that the city extended just before the location of the Rosevelt Cinema... speculating

My point is to handle the tourism old Havana will be super renovated, I propose thus that we have Imax and Dolby fight it out, in this hood.

Here was my first drinking stomping grounds at age 14 in San Juan. These guys are expert restaurateurs, I remember a cool 400 year old house with a stack of mcintosh audio gear. Yes rumours of me hanging a pair of ADIDAS from Ponce De Leon's finger are true, but there is a statute of limitations....1976!

OF COURSE this is Family Folklore and must be handed as a Tall Tale until the definitive records are found, but my aunt for example swore that she saw papers to reclaim a Marquis Title in the hands of the below named Leonardo Selles, my father said that was bullshit.

Found my Grandmothers brothers school record: but nothing on Coronel Jose Selles their father, Nokey is one of my sequential (10) last names, in Spain you can keep going back generations of mother and fathers last names.

Selles means eyebrows in French.

This is a picture of Queen Isabela II

My Parents had a sword encrusted with stones given to Jose Selles before he was sent by the King to fight rebels in Cuba sometime around mid 1800, allegedly they had a love affair which is something for what the Queen was well known: The Promiscuous Queen. 11 out of her 12 pregnancies were attributed to 11 different men.

I swear I am not making this up. She is in Spielberg's AMISTAD, she married her cousin at age 15 who apparently could not consummate the marriage...

Of course these were probably bootlegged, Holywood should create a tiered pricing structure for Hotel Window cinemas in Havana where people are so poor. Investors could implement Imax and Dolby Cinema Grade in the remodeled sections of Old Havana provided they created comunal theater centers in the rest of the Island. If technology is the first thing trough which reconnection of USA and CUBA will happen, then I say we revive the technical and cultural greatness of cinemas past. A measured deployment that balances for profit high tech cinemas in the tourist sectors with equally contributed venues for the cuban proletariat is the solution in my view.

Small private cinemas like this one will be immediately shut down. Photo: Cubanite

HAVANA TIMES — The Cuban government today ordered the “immediate” closure of private movie theaters, one of the many activities that have emerged in recent years in the context of limited legalized private initiative, reportó dpa news.

The measure affects mostly 3D theaters, which have become popular on the island. In Havana, several people offer films in private cafes or at homes, in small rooms or spaces adapted to that end.

The authorities also banned private gaming rooms.

“The exhibition of movies (including 3D rooms) and computer games are to immediately cease in any self-employed business activity,” reads an official note from the Council of Ministers published in Granma newspaper. These services “have never been authorized”, notes the text.

Raul Castro’s government recently began to tighten the rules against the emerging private sector of the island, the so-called “self-employed”. A few weeks ago the government clamped down against the sale of imported clothing, another popular private business activity in the streets of Havana.

Under the leadership of Raul Castro, the island has been undergoing a gradual economic reform process with elements of market reforms after decades of state monopoly. The measures include the authorization of self-employment in more than 200 small trades and activities.

The private sector was totally abolished by Fidel Castro in the late ’60s during the “revolutionary offensive”, which nationalized small businesses.

According to the government, there are currently 442,000 registered as “self-employed”. The Castro administration hopes for this emerging sector to absorb over a million state workers to be laid off in the coming years.

The emergence of the private sector has also given rise to increasing social differences. While many of the “self-employed” have improved significantly their income, state workers continue to receive low wages averaging around US $20 a month.